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Wednesday, July 23, 2014

Lets go back in time. This time we are counting 1991, only one year prior to the great SNES release in Europe. There was a game developed by Natsume, published by Taito, known in Japan only as Power Blazer, but to many others around the world as Power Blade. It had action, it had a super master computer, it had explosions everywhere, boomerangs, powerups, burgers and a kickass soundtrack that still to this day amazes me with its pure awsomeness. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPoIwNn4-2U) The graphics where almost unheard of and my little six year old mind was blown to pieces.

(Insert corney picture with sister below)

The game starts you out at the introscreen (Duh) where you get the options to either start the game in either normal or Expert mode, or continue using a code gotten from previous levels. But you gotta pick fast, and I do mean fast because it takes the intro sequence literally two seconds to start.

During the intro you get the backstory of the game.

In the year 2191 the earth has left all of its power in the hands of the infamous Master Computer and is now living under a Terminator, Skynet like control, and like in the not so related movie the machines decides that there is no longer any need for humans and goes haywire and tries to take over the world.

It's now up to you. Nova the security-chief to set things right. You are told, by your boss. To go out and search the 6 sectors to find agents that are holding security-keys (one agent and key per sector) to unlock the doors that holds the defence robot that protects the Master Computer located in Sector 7, all while you watch your ass or backside, since this is a nes relase and we don't want any swearing.

You push start and then you get to the sector select screen. luckily they made this game like megaman so you get to choose which sector you want to start out in. The only one locked is Sector 7 since that is the one you are trying to get acces to. So lets talk about stages. The first stage starts you of at the bottom of a spacerocket that you have to climb to get to the boss and agent. It's pretty straight forward actually. Word of advice at the beginning of the stage. When you climb up the first ladder you can jump down on the platform to your right to get the awsome powerup. It will give you an android like appearance and a super weapon. Like I said when you get to the top you reach the first Defence robot or the Boss, if you prefer that term.

Now let it be said that even though the graphics is awsome, the sound is epic 8 bit art and the stages are extremely well thought out its all just to easy and you wont get to many problems anywhere in the game especially with the first boss. It's this white robot with a big gun that dosent do much of anything. He shoots his gun goes right, left and jumps over you. That might sound hard but everything he does is like in slow motion and it's way to easy to predict his moves. Besides by the time you reach him you got all the powerups and as long as you remember to dodge his slowmotion, small, wanna be bullets you will be just fine. You win the stage, get to the mainframe, turn it off and you continue to the level select screen.

The second stage is windmill heaven for some reason, but as a Dane I can't stop smiling about that one. And here is where the whole maze like stages sets in. If you got a little jump skill the stage is rather easy but I don't wanna spoil the game to much it's better you play it yourself. Just let me tell you this. There will be waterfalls, gears, the windmills, slugs and frogs that explodes for some odd reason I still need to figure out. The boss is a Dragon-robot that transforms into a fire spiral and it puts up some challenge until you figure out its pattern. It also shoots fireballs but just dodge those and you will be fine.

That gets us to Sector 3. How to explain this one I got no idea since it's bagground changes to everything from a futuristic look, a swamp like appereance to some sort of lava melting, moss thingy. It is all basicly just a little disturbing to say the least, and to top it all of the boss is a freaking robot bee hive. I mean what the fuck where they thinking here? I don't even know. It puzzles my mind even to this day.

Now Sector 4 is a half build skyscraper if anything and it can be tricky to get the hang of. Just make sure you get to the freezer room before you atemp the high climb towards the top of the building and you should be fine. The only real though spot to speak of is where you gotta jump from these moving platforms, where one mistake will send you hurling down to the ground, and nobody wants to clean up after that mess. The boss is this wanna be Thor the thunder robot god, and it is hard to tell the difference right?

Well maybe not that much, and what is with the finger is he an E.T. or a thunder god? Either way aouch.

And that brings us up to Sector 5. Sector 5 has always for some reason been my favorite level in the game. The maze effect isnt really an issue here and almost the entire level is played out on an orange ship. The boss is this genie (and I don't mean the cute disney kind) like robot that disappears and pops up again at random while shooting bullets in all directions, and even though it's my favorite level there isn't really much else to say about it.

Sector 6 Takes place in a straight line with the city in the bagground. You can get into the sewers bellow by the ladders spread out on the road. Then you reach the main building that just reminds you once again of the mazes that's in this game. The boss is this huge android guy surrounded by platforms that appears and disappears like in Megaman.

And then we got Sector 7 the last and final stage in the game. Now since this is the final game I won't tell you anything about it since I dont like to many spoilers in my everyday life so why should you? That is also the reason I have left out many things yet to be said about this game. All I will say is this.

If there ever where an all time favorite for the NES in my heart it will always be and always has been Power Blade. The Graphics is awsome the soundtrack I can still listen to with great joy in my heart, and the gameplay is solid. The only bad thing to say about this game is that it is to easy! You can complete it in 30 minutes or less if you have done it before. Even the expert mode dosen't leave you with much since the difficulty is the same, the only difference is that, the time you have to complete the stages is 350 seconds instead of 999 seconds. But that is all I'm going to say about this game. I'm going back to my controller to enjoy my childhood one more time.

Retro Dude saying goodbye and I do hope you get a chance on playing an instant classic!

Thursday, July 17, 2014

This time we're gonna take a closer look on a classic atari 2600 game better known as Pitfall or Pitfall Harry's Jungle Adventure.

The year was 1982 and the gaming industri was booming. An arcade on every corner and Starcade on the T.V. not a bad year to be a gamer at all. Atari was making the big bucks but failed to give credit where credit was due and because of that Activision was born. But thats enough brief history for now.

Pitfall made by brilliant designer David Crane who is also responsible for such titles as Dragster, Freeway, Laser Blast and many others, is an adventure game where you take the role as Harry. Your task is to find the 32 treasures of the jungle within 20 minutes while avoiding pits, lakes, crokodiles, snakes, huge scorpions, rolling logs everywhere and much more. The game ends when all the treasure is found, your time is up or when you have used up all your lives. The game itself contains 255 trees all of wich Harry will pass on his journey making the game a cirkular maze. That basicly means when you have finished the end screen the first screen reappears. Now while the graphics might not seem like much today back in that time it must have been impressive I'm sure. The sounds are typical Atari and it's the first game I have ever encountered with no music. There is only sound while you jump, die or run into logs and it makes the game at first glance seem rather boring (But I guess it beats the Astroids soundtrack) The gameplay on the other hand is very nice. Its smooth controlling all the way but its still hard as *!#@ Trust me on this one when you try jumping over a crokodile pit your accuracy and precision has to be perfect, and I do mean perfect if you're just a split second off you are dead. Then we got these almost trap like pits that just apears out of nowhere on the ground and they will lure you into sweet, sweet game over, right until you're ready to explode of pure agony! But once you get the hang of it the only real trick is to collect all the treasure before the timer runs out. So far after countless tries im still missing 2 (But hey im no expert)

Pitfall is all in all a very decent game compared to alot of other games that came out in that time period, the graphics and gameplay is nice and its almost addictive when you decide on getting all 32 treasures, and its one of the few atari games with an actual end goal, not just scoring points for all eternity. The commercial even had a very young Jack Black (that at the time might not have meant that much but today its pretty damn cool) So all in all if I had to rate it I would say its an 8/10 due to the missing soundtrack.

Thats all for my first review this is the Retro Dude saying goodbye and I do hope you get a chance on playing an instant classic!